


"Just Because They Were Animals..."

by flaxenfreckle



Series: Bremen [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, I'm not sure where this is going to go exactly so i'll add tags as I go, Lucretia's year alone, Spoilers for Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, or more canon speculation?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-05-03 07:51:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14564409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flaxenfreckle/pseuds/flaxenfreckle
Summary: When Lucretia wakes up, the taste of blood is tattooed on her tongue, the pulse of a what is more than a migraine making her head swim.She does not open her eyes.Lucretia does not open her eyes for a very long time.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oof I didn't mean take this long to write this part? I originally thought it was going to be a oneshot but then I realized it was going to be super long.  
> Also college has been kicking my ass as of late orz  
> And I know there's a Lucretia's year alone fic going around now? I didnt want to read it and have all my ideas just being from there lmao

 

When Lucretia wakes up, the taste of blood is tattooed on her tongue, the pulse of a what is more than a migraine making her head swim.  Her entire body aches, shooting pains here and there and she doesn’t know what bed she’s on, but it’s uncomfortable.

She does not open her eyes.

Lucretia does not open her eyes for a very long time. 

(Her dreams ease in and out with her consciousness and always it’s the same nightmare. Being shot out of the sky - watching the others be flung from the Starblaster’s deck cracking their heads on the unforgiving gray stone of a world that buzzes uncomfortably in her psyche. It’s unnatural to see Lup so devoid of life. “ _ Fiery.” _ Her mind provides and she’d probably snort at such a befitting notion if she was more lucid. Taako looking so peaceful with blood pouring out a gash on his head. His hands still, even dead to the world, reach for Lup. The immaculate hair of their captain bedraggled and strewn with dirt and grit so early in whatever hell her mind keeps reeling her back to. 

Everything about this nightmare is so unnatural. 

Even worse than that, everything in this nightmare is so  _ real _ .

And Lucretia wants to wake up.)

When she does, eventually, it’s to the muted and weakened hum of the bond engine, a slight vibrating nearness that she can feel under her entire aching body.

The world is murky around her, and she looks as much as she can, searching for the familiar shine of her gold plated wire rimmed glasses. 

(A gift from a friend on a world she’ll never visit again.)

All she can see is the worn deck of the Starblaster. It explains why she’s uncomfortable, but little else. From her position she knows she’s in the stairwell and  _ that _ makes about as much sense as anything else. 

(Which is to say not much. The thought crosses her mind - how long has she been here really? Why didn’t Taako, or Merle, or Lup, or anyone come and get her? Check up on her? Lucretia has never - she  _ isn’t _ in the habit of passing out at random intervals in random places.)

(Not yet anyway.)

And Lucretia - she tries to remember. She remembers the purple sky of her homeworld, twin suns setting and painting the sky burning scarlets and greens softer than the grass she walked on.

Lucretia remembers her father’s smile upon hearing she got into the IPRE, the first novel she ghost wrote, the kiss of a long forgotten breeze, smelling of baby’ breath and tasting of petrichor, gray clouds rolling in and backdropped on an extra ordinary purple sky.

On the ground, she comes to the conclusion that this is cycle 53. Month nine - or ten at the latest - and that explains the darkness. Cycle 53 seemed to be plagued with constant storms and the lack of any stable land masses forced Davenport to keep the Starblaster mostly airborne. 

The Light fell, with the crash of thunder and the swell of lightning, and its place triangulated thanks to Lup and Taako. And Lucretia remembers - she stayed behind this time.

That doesn’t explain why she hurts all over, or why she’s laying down on the dirty floor near the stairs, but piecing together the story can wait until later.  

Cycle 53, she decides. One mystery solved. About a dozen more to go.

And they aren’t going to be solved by lying down on the floor, no matter how much she wishes it would. 

Lucretia pushes herself up, bracing her entire body on her elbows, biting the inside of her cheek to stave off the nausea and the white pain that grounds it’s way through her head.

“Merle?” She croaks out and the rawness of her throat and words surprises her. If this is really cycle 53, then Merle should be on deck. Should be  _ any _ where. Barry, Magnus, and - for once - Davenport went to go retrieve the Light and… she realizes that’s all she can remember. They went to go retrieve the Light, Davenport patting her hand and smiling as he promised they would write down everything for her. Magnus stuffing his face the night before, Lup and Taako ribbing him as Barry looked occasionally up from his notes, smiling to himself, surrounded by his family.

That’s as much as she can remember from this cycle.

And the more she tries to fill in the blanks, the more splitting in her head intensifies.

“Taako? L-Lup?” She tries again and her voice shakes. She’s shaking all over, the longer no one comes the more fear is starting to curl around her heart. She tries to stand, almost falling and leaning on the wall for support. Her glasses are further down the hall, cracked and she hardly notices.

Lucretia hardly notices the unnatural silence. There’s no pattering of rain or distant rolls of thunder. She doesn’t hear the anyone in their staterooms passing the time, or water rushing through the head. 

The saloon is empty, and so is the galley. Devoid of cooking food, or Merle coaxing plants to bloom, or the journal she  _ swears _ she was writing in. Lucretia stumbles her way to the staterooms, all empty, and the head is a mess of shattered glass. The only room that is occupied is hers, and Lucretia collapses in front of Fischer’s tank, clutching her head as they hum her a worried song. 

Tears prick her eyes and Lucretia weeps into her arms.

For what seems likes hours, the only song played is a duet of Lucretia's crying and Fischer’s humming lullabies, trying to soothe her.

She and Fischer are the only ones on board the Starblaster. Who knows how long they’ve been here alone. Who knows how long Fischer has been waiting for anyone to peek their head into Lucretia’s room to visit.

How long have they been here alone? Stranded?

The more the minutes pass, the less this situation makes any sense. The glow of Fischer’s bell provides little comfort and Lucretia surveys her room through her cracked glasses.

Hers is filled with papers and she tries to keep them organized because she has a  _ system _ , but every few cycles she’ll let go, and get distracted...and well - it’ll take hours to organize them, if she actually gets to it. Her pen and quill collection scattered about on the floor and her journals-

The  _ journals _ .

The spike of adrenaline Lucretia gets makes her head swim again, but she scrambles over to the mess on her floor, picking and flipping through her journals trying to figure out if the first couple of months are on her floor or under bed or  _ anything. _

And then she finds a journal. After a few seconds of erratic sifting and finding 34d or 12t she finds one. The material is leather from an animal she’s doesn’t remember, the blue-green hide mesmerizing, but embossed on the spine and dyed black is 55b.

The second Journal of cycle 55.

 

"Doesn't Mean They Couldn't Have Been Men"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucretia sleeps with one hand clutching her wand and another clutching a knife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God this took so long. Thank you everyone for your patience!!! I would not only like to thank you, but TAZ transcripts for my fact checking. The next chapter shouldnt take so long, I already have a good portion of it finished in fact!  
> Also it's like 2am so please excuse any mistakes!!! I'll fix them later orz

Lucretia can hear them at night. The jeers and whoops - a skulking pack of hyenas dead set on collecting their blood.

It’s only been three months. Three months since they were shot out of the sky, her  _ family _ captured and killed.

There’s nothing she can do to bring them back. They’re  _ dead _ . Gone. And Lucretia doesn’t know whether they rotted away in a cell, or were decapitated, or left to bleed out from wounds that couldn’t be healed.

She and Fischer are the only ones left. 

She’s regained most of her memories of the missing cycles by reading her journals. Detailed in a meticulous fashion that’s unique to only her. Other journals and notebooks scattered about are accounts from the crew on expeditions, stories they only half recall the most important details of. It annoys her, some of the gaps left because Magnus saw a dog and got too excited to write down something important, or how instead of recounting the retrieval of the Light, Taako writes down the best foods he made that year. 

Half of one of the notebooks is burned away and covered in soot.

Other memories came back on their own, eventually and Lucretia doesn’t bother to keep a journal. There’s no time to write and either way she doubts she’ll be able to forget so easily. 

She sleeps in the safest place in the Starblaster now - the control room. In a gutted out section of panelling below the helm, lined with blankets and pillows and shirts from everyone’s rooms, Lucretia tucks herself into the small space when she can. 

But no matter where she sleeps, it’s with her wand clutched in one hand and a hunting knife looted from the corpse of one of the first few mercenaries she’s had to kill in the other. 

The control room windows - shattered - have long since been boarded up and Fischer’s tank levitated in at the end of a long day when she found she still had the spell slots to spare. Their tank is held together with bandages and regulation spackle, cracked heavily, but far from shattering. 

These last few months, everything on the Starblaster seems to be that way - one wrong move from shattering into pieces, all the work she’s put into making she and Fischer  _ survive _ ,  a literal stones throw away from being all for nothing.

The ship had barely started during those first few weeks of on this plane, and Lucretia, the chronicler, little to no experience or proficiency for machines, had to learn it inside out. 

Poured over Davenport’s organized notes (as the years wore on they became less professional with scribbled gnomish in the margins, his thoughts and opinions bleeding into where facts and statements should have been.) and Barry’s less organized observations (never one for the level of professionalism their Captain showed, Barry’s notes were methodical and analytical, despite being out of order, with other research notes overlapped on margins and as footnotes). Dug up a long forgotten regulation handbook on the basics of the bond engine and how it operated. It wasn’t as nearly as informational as her Captain and brother’s but still holding essential information she needed.

(Lucretia almost gives up when the engine fails on her. For hours the bond engine had been unresponsive. The absence of the constant whirring and vibrations had left something hollow in its wake. 

Hollow and emptied out, nothing left to had, or desired.)

She’s not Davenport, but she can fly the Starblaster when she can get it up the air.

And tonight is not one of those nights.

The Starblaster is in one of the many forests of this planet, a modified invisibility cast over it as she works on the thrusters and boosters, praying to whatever gods that will listen that the marauders or mercenaries or  _ whoever _ on this plane don’t find them before she can get the Starblaster back up into the sky. Out of range and above the clouds where maybe she and Fischer can get a decent night's sleep.

Fischer, speaking of them, sings tired notes to Lucretia as she works. Their glow illuminates the tight space where the engine is and during the nights like these, where Lucretia stays up until dawn to keep recasting invisibility, the only light on the Starblaster.

(The galaxies are still breathtaking. A constant these last twenty years and some things have faded, some people are dust, but Lucretia has seen every member of their family gazing at the nebulous glow of Fischer’s bell with reverence. Some more than others. Some less than others.)

“I know Fischer.” She says to them, twisting her hand in a way that she’ll regret come sunrise.  Some of the spaces really were only for the hands of a gnome or a small child and Lucretia is neither of those things. One of them she  _ was _ , but only once and only very briefly. 

Fischer hums some more, five notes tinged with melancholy and Lucretia sighs. 

“I miss them too.” She says. “And...yes. I-I’m scared too.” She tightens a few more bolts, Fischer handing them to her as she asks, getting them wrong only a quarter of the time. She takes the time to recast invisibility and throughout the night she and Fischer talk. 

Or Fischer hums and sings and Lucretia interprets it based on pitch and pauses. 

And they talk through the night. Reminiscing about their family, recalling meeting on Legato and at the mention of Magnus’s duck, Fischer bobs their way through the Starblaster, bringing back all of their favorites, handing them to Lucretia in place of a torque wrench or screwdriver. 

They manage to startle a laugh out of Lucretia when they try to sing a few notes from Lup and Barry’s duet and give up, with a frustrated trill.

And they’re both scared - desperate to make it through the next nine months even - but there’s moments with just the two of them where Lucretia can pretend she’s not one panic attack from spiraling. That her heart doesn’t ache with the absence of the people she loves more than anything. That every second of every day that she and Fischer aren’t being hunted down. 

Lucretia finishes her haphazard repairs, not daring to move her home right now and attract attention to themselves. 

Fischer lets out a confused string of notes and Lucretia stretches her arms, wincing at how loud the cracks are in the quiet of the night. She shrugs off her IPRE robe, folding it up and laying down, pillowing it under her head. 

“All finished for now, Fischer.” She smiles. Her wand is in one hand. The knife in the other. 

Fischer drifts downwards, dimming their glow and the both of them spend the rest of the night talking and singing and humming. 

And hours later, when the sun is starting it’s ascent through the air, Lucretia makes her way to the helm, sighing in relief as the thrusters are online and operational, Fischer slinging their tendrils across her shoulders with a pleased string of high notes.

“We’re going to be just fine.” She tells Fischer and tries to convince herself. They bolt through the air, hidden throughout the night and with another 30 minutes of invisibility to spare. And they’re above the clouds, watching as the sun rises on the plane that killed her family. 

Lucretia tucks herself into her makeshift bed and Fischer settles themself into the tank. Below the deck the Bond Engine drones on and Lucretia closes her eyes. 

For once, she’s looking forward to the end of the year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> uhhh warning for some light gore i guess?? Also oh boy it has been around six months huh?

The mirror in the head is grimy from disuse, everyone’s hair and moustache products and fertilizers spilled out all over the sink and turning the cracked mirror into a horror scene.

The sink isn’t much better, the granite Taako transmuted from stainless steel having a long crack through the middle from that last tumble, and the floor is slowly pooling with water.

Lucretia examines what she can see of herself in the mirror. The black eye is purpling around the edges, and with her limited knowledge of healing magic, she uses this one precious spell slot to heal it. She can’t afford to have an eye swollen shut. Can’t afford to have another blind spot.

Even six months into this hell she’s had to live through and Lucretia is still dull in places, edges that haven’t sharpened out and feelings that still get in the way of survival.

The slash on her arm gets treated normally, her finger put into a splint.She knows that blood would have been hardly noticeable on her robe, but she's glad to not have worn it anyway.

The fear of conspicuity overrided the comfort the fabric provided and her clothes are covered in dirt and grease and grime.

And blood.

There’s blood everywhere, really. Her face and arms and neck. Caked in her hair and Lucretia balls her hands into a tight fist. Scowling at her reflection and her hair. 

It cascades down her back. Downy and soft when brushed, a mess in the morning, a goulash of curling flyaways and tangled strands that has put both twins’ bed head to shame on several occasions.

It’s the hair that Lup has run her fingers through during long nights. The hair Taako has braided on multiple occasions whilst muttering some backhanded comment. She has hair ties in perhaps every room on the Starblaster, to the chagrin of Davenport, barrettes and ribbons bought by Magnus over the cycles, “barrettes” made by Merle.

( On a far away planet, in a distant plane, it’s the hair a long forgotten mother used comb, a less forgotten father ruffled with affection from time to time.)

It’s usually pure white. Snowy. The shade of the spores in Fungston that killed Magnus, the white of Barry’s bones in cycle 26 when beetles stripped him down and she couldn’t do anything but  _ watch  _ as her _ brother - _

And Lucretia takes a deep breath. Several of them and grabs the scissors on her belt. 

Her hair is now more a light grayish-brown. It’s honestly filthy - even more now, covered in oil and soot - and blood. She hardly feels safe enough to shower, let alone be vulnerable enough to wash her hair.

She feels nothing as the first lock goes, nor the next several.

There won’t be anymore hair to grab. No hair to be yanked and fall face first into a fist with. 

When Lucretia is finished, her hair is cropped. Short. Barely enough for a fistful of anything now.  Around her feet is her hair, now apart of a part of her. There’s no broom anymore, the last one broken and put through the throat of the bounty hunter whose blood she now wears. So Lucretia steps around her grimy locks and makes her way through the Starblaster and to the helm.

The Starblaster is airborne, above a expansive lake and Lucretia starts warming up the thrusters, starts preparing to move. She doesn’t know what half of the buttons and knobs do - still, but she has the essentials down pact.

On, off. Up, down. Move to one side, and move to another, minding the turn radius.

When she’s finished, she goes out onto the deck, blood still covering her. 

It’s sunset on this plane. Fiery oranges mix with soft pinks and softer purples that make something twist inside. But it does more than twist - it bubbles and it  _ wrenches _ and Lucretia puts a hand to her mouth, choking on a sob.

She can’t do this. She  _ can’t _ do this. It’s been 65 years. She’s seen death and destruction, horror beyond anyone in this fucked up plane will ever know. She’s seen her family die over and over and  _ over  _ again.  She’s died more than any regular  _ human _ should have.

(Lucretia doesn’t know if she’s 20 years old or 85 years old. If, even in the end  _ they’re _ dust too, does it even matter?)

From inside the Starblaster, she can hear a worried trill.

Tendrils wrap around Lucretia’s shoulders and arms and Fischer bumps their bell against her head, giving another questioning hum at her lack of hair. Her tears have left tracts on the blood on her face and Lucretia remembers what she came out here to do. For now, she tucks away all those emotions, and locks them away in the ornate chest of her heart. She’s doing this - shes surviving for her family.

Everything she’s done so far and will continue to do for the rest of this and every cycle will be for them. It will be  _ all _ for them

Lucretia pats Fischer’s tendril and shrugs him off to his disappointment. The she goes to bodies, stiff and cold on the deck. Two of them she got with Magic Missile and Scorching Ray. Their skin is still blistered and one of the corpse has had half of their face melted off.

The other corpse has the broken broom through their neck.

Lucretia drags the bodies across the deck to the railing and then throws them overboard. She can hear their bodies splash down below and if they weren’t dead before, well they are now.

Both she and Fischer watch for a moment as the water ripples below, the bodies starting to slowly float to the top.

(Lucretia thinks about the beach cycle.  How happy and carefree everyone was for just  _ one _ year. A year that felt too short. A year that  _ was _ too short in each and every measure.

She wonders if Fischer thinks about their home.)

The sun has set on another day. And Lucretia heads back to the helm, Fischer following behind. 

She pilots the Starblaster with Invisibility cast over it and she hopes and prays to whatever gods and goddesses on this plane that they can make it to the end of this month. The end of this week.

The end of this year.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God this took so long to update  
> I'm not abandoning this fic!!! But the combo of my executive dysfunction, mental illnesses, college have been kicking my butt.  
> Thank you for reading and the next installment will be here...eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> Again this is all inspired by the song Bremen by PigpenTheater Co!  
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
